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What needs to be finished still needs to be finished but less of it needs to be finished than needed to be finished at this time yesterday. Rather than leave this blog looking sad and neglected, I'm posting another of my favorite episodes of my favorite TV program. It's The Dick Van Dyke Show for October 31, 1962. I remember laughing my fool head off at this when it was first broadcast and it startles me to realize I was about ten-and-a-half years old at the time.

It's a reminder of the awesome physical (along with verbal) comedy skills of the star of that series. I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone who has since starred in a situation comedy who could have pulled this off…maybe John Ritter? Watch it and see if you can come up with a name. I'll be back after the video embed to tell you an interesting (to me) thing about this episode…

The actor who played the hypnotist is Charles Aidman, who also played Rob Petrie's insurance man a year later in another episode. Mr. Aidman was one of those actors — as you may know, I love performers in this category — who worked constantly without ever becoming easily identifiable from one role on one series. Jamie Farr had that anonymous status before he became Max Klinger on M*A*S*H. If he hadn't landed that part, he probably would still have worked all the time but there'd be no way I could describe him in one sentence so most of you would know who I was talking about.

Aidman's career ran from about 1952 until his death in 1993 and his IMBD listing is very, very long and — I'm sure — very, very incomplete.

It presently lists his last job as a 1992 episode of Garfield and Friends but I know that's not right because when I booked him for it, we had to work around the shooting schedule of some movie he was working on. But I wanted him to be my narrator because he would give it a kind of Twilight Zone ambience. Aidman was so good at that kind of thing that he'd served as the narrator of the 1985 Twilight Zone revival on CBS. Pro that he was, he arrived at our studio right on time but with an attitude of "Are you sure it's me you wanted?" He did a lot of voiceover work but almost never for cartoons and certainly not for allegedly-funny ones.

I get asked, "How do you direct cartoon voices?" Here's a perfect example: You hire the right actor, show them which microphone to use and then get the hell out of their way. I don't think I gave him any more direction at the top than "Just forget it's a cartoon. Read the copy like it's a serious suspense film." And then the next bit of direction I gave him was, "That was great, Charles. Come out of the booth and sign some paperwork so we can pay you."

And yes, we did talk a little bit about some of the other things he'd done, including The Dick Van Dyke Show. Very nice man. Very good at what he did. If you'd like to see a little of the cartoon he narrated, it's online here. The other voices are by Lorenzo Music (of course), Gregg Berger, Thom Huge and June Foray. That's right: June Foray. Directing her or any of those folks was no more labor-intensive than directing Charles Aidman. All you need to do is hire the right people.

I'm going to stop answering questions from folks who don't sign something that at least resembles a real name — but "Bobo" writes to ask…

I live in Kentucky and the only dream I have in life is to do cartoon voices. I don't want to do anything else but voices for cartoons. In the past, you said on your blog that to do that, you had to live in Los Angeles but since COVID, a lot of the business has converted to people recording in their home studios and working on ZOOM. I have a great studio here in my basement in Kentucky. Can I now have a real career in cartoon voice work from here? I know there are a number of very successful voice actors now who live in other cities and work on shows that were formerly recorded with local talent in L.A.

First off, "Bobo," I don't think there's anyone who makes a decent living doing cartoon voices. The folks you think do are folks who do cartoon voices and narration and dubbing and looping and audiobooks and commercials and announcing and a dozen other jobs where one's voice is heard. Mel Blanc…Daws Butler…Paul Frees…June Foray…none of those folks were ever only cartoon voice actors. Some of them, at times, didn't even make most of their income that way.

Also: There are probably a couple I don't know about but every currently-working-a-lot cartoon voice actor I know who doesn't live in or around Los Angeles did when they got established in the field. Then they moved back to Wherever and worked remotely.

To your real question: Yes, it is much easier now than it used to be for voice actors to "phone it in" but you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. It's not as big a disadvantage as it used to be but it's still a disadvantage. With time, it will probably become less of one but I can't say for sure how much. There will still be shows that want you present in their studio on their microphones. There will still be video game producers that want you to come in and put on motion-capture devices so they can record your lip and body movements.

That said, I need to add this: I have never and will never encourage anyone to uproot their life and move to Los Angeles (or anywhere) to pursue any career in any corner of show business. The vast majority of those stories end in failure…and I don't mean 60% or 70%. It's more like 90% and up. I also don't encourage anyone to invest in the time and expense of building a great home recording studio. It may pay off and it may not. It's like a lot of things in life: Only you can decide whether or not to take the gamble. Because it's always a gamble.

The other day here, I wrote about William Conrad and his job as the narrator of the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons. A number of you wrote in and reminded me that in an article that I wrote and repurposed for this blog, I told a story that perhaps bears repeating. As noted, those cartoons had a cast of four…and only four. No guest stars…

Some of those Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons are loaded with one and two-line incidental parts, all well-juggled by the stock company. I tallied one in which June [Foray] played six roles, Bill [Scott] played seven and Paul [Frees] played nine.

Bill Conrad usually supplied only his one, marvelous voice. It occasionally frustrated him that Jay Ward, who directed the sessions, didn't think he was capable of contributing more. One day, he told Jay, "Hey, I can double."

Jay was skeptical but he decided to give it a try. He assigned Conrad a bit part in an episode set on a tropical island. The role was a native named Sam who had only one or two very short speeches. When the proper moment came, Conrad screwed up his mouth, pitched his chords high and spoke in a voice he was sure did not sound like the Narrator.

"Cut," Jay said. "Bill, that sounds too much like the Narrator."

So they did another take. Conrad strained, tightened his larynx and performed the brief dialogue in a voice he thought sounded nothing like the Narrator.

"Cut," Jay yelled. "Too much like the Narrator. Try it again."

So Conrad tried it again and again and again. Ordinarily, actors in Jay Ward cartoons got it on the first take or, at worst, the second. That day, William Conrad set the house record.

Just how many attempts it took, no one is certain. Bill Scott used to change the number every time he told the story. Sometimes, it was eight. Sometimes, ten. Whatever, by the time Jay Ward was satisfied, Bill Conrad was hoarse and drenched in perspiration.

Jay, however, felt the situation was too humorous not to make worse. He called his publicist — a fellow named Howard Brandy, who was properly in tune with the Ward sense o' humor. The next day, Variety and Hollywood Reporter announced that Jay Ward Studios would soon commence production on a new series, spun off from the Bullwinkle series. It was called Sam the Native and the press release proclaimed it would star William Conrad as the voice of the title character.

Conrad knew it was a joke but none of his friends did. For weeks, people stopped him and asked, "Hey, congrats on Sam the Native. What does his voice sound like?" The one time I met him, it was twenty years later and I immediately told him I was still looking forward to the Sam the Native show.

Mr. Conrad's reply cannot be repeated here, this paper having certain standards relating to profanity. I can tell you though that he sounded just like the Narrator.

And I guess I should have added that he laughed while saying it. And of course, he sounded just like the Narrator when he laughed.

Rory M. Wohl wants to know something…

My few remaining synapses must be firing less & less often because it just occurred to me to ask you: Is the William Conrad you note as one of the Rocky & Bullwinkle cast the same William Conrad who went on to star in Cannon, Nero Wolfe and Jake and the Fatman?

Wikipedia seems to indicate that he was, but, with a range of roles so vast, I needed to hear it from a real, live expert to believe he had that kind of range (and sense of humor). I guess that's why they call it "acting," huh?

Yes, definitely the same guy. He had a real good career in radio — among many others, he was Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke in those days — and lots of on-camera roles in film and television. He was also an announcer in many commercials and TV shows…The Fugitive (the show with David Janssen) for one. Usually, he was hired for a deeper, slower voiceover and that's how he narrated the earliest Rocky & Bullwinkle shows but they soon were having him talk faster and when he did, his voice went up in pitch.

Conrad was the narrator on all the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons Jay Ward produced and on a few of the Dudley Do-Right cartoons, though Paul Frees wound up narrating most of those. The entire cast of the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons consisted of Frees, June Foray, Bill Scott and Mr. Conrad. There were no guest stars in any of the episodes because it was impossible to write a role that one of those four people could not do.

And while Conrad's job in most was confined to the narration, every so often when there was a crowd scene and multiple voices were needed, they'd have him do one of them. He was a great announcer but he did not do a very good job of not sounding like William Conrad.

Here's another batch of cereal commercials produced for the Quaker Oats company by Jay Ward's company.  Most are for Quisp and Quake but there are two in there for another cereal, King Vitaman, and the king's voice is Joe Flynn, best known as Captain Binghamton on the McHale's Navy TV show.  Also in these, you'll meet Quake's arch-enemy, Simon LeGreedy, whose voice was supplied by Hans Conried.

Daws Butler is Quisp and a few supporting characters.  William Conrad is Quake, who is remodeled into a slimmer character in these spots.  June Foray is all the ladies and the little boy.  Bill Scott and Paul Frees handle the other roles. Once again, they hired more actors than they absolutely had to…

In 1965, the Quaker Oats Company introduced two sugary cereals — Quisp and Quake — with a series of animated commercials produced by Jay Ward's studio. Bill Scott. who was more or less the creative head of the operation, wrote, produced and did voices in most of them. I do not recall tasting either product but I sure liked the commercials, which were produced with the same comic sensibilities that Ward's crew had brought to Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, George of the Jungle and not nearly enough others.

The commercials also employed the main stock company voice actors from the Ward cartoons. Paul Frees was the announcer. William Conrad, who usually was the announcer, was the voice of Quake. Daws Butler was the voice of Quisp. Scott did many voices and if there was a female in the commercial, it was June Foray. Even back then, I was impressed that they spent the money to have five actors in a one-minute cartoon. Frees, Butler and Scott could each easily have done all the male roles by themselves.

Neither cereal was that huge a success. In 1969, the Quake character was redesigned, slimmed-down and given an Australian accent. Three years later, the commercials asked kids to vote which one they liked better and Quisp trounced Quake. Quake cereal was discontinued…or rather, replaced by Quake's Orange Quangaroos which featured a kangaroo character on its boxes. It barely lasted four years before disappearing from shelves.

Quisp was on most shelves until 1979 or thereabouts. Since then, Quaker brings it back every now and then for a while and it's available online from the factory. If you're dying for a box, you can order it here.

Here are six of the commercials…

I'm doing several panels at Comic-Con about folks who supply voices for animated cartoons and other media. Saturday at 1 PM in Room 6BCF, we'll be talking with Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger, Phil LaMarr, Shelby Young, Brian Hull and Townsend Coleman. Later that afternoon at 4 PM in Room 23ABC, I'll be doing an in-depth one-on-one interview of Phil LaMarr. I will interrogate him so ruthlessly, he may confess to felonies and misdemeanors.

On Sunday at 11:45 AM in Room 6A, I'll do another Cartoon Voices Panel — this one with Jim Meskimen, Rosemary Watson, Zeno Robinson, Kaitlyn Robrock and Fred Tatasciore. Later, at 3 PM in Room 25ABC, I'll be hosting The Business of Cartoon Voices, which is the panel about how to get into the voiceover business. We do this panel each year because there are some unscrupulous teachers and voice coaches out there who charge a fortune for semi-worthless advice on how to have a career in voiceover. We'll give you a lot of advice for absolutely nothing.

On that panel, I will be joined by Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger and agent Sam Frishman, who's with C.E.S.D., one of the best agencies in the field. As usual, a lot of working voice actors will be there in the audience also because you can never learn too much about your profession.

I forget who but someone a few months ago in e-mail asked me if I had a list of everyone who'd ever been on one of my voice panels. I don't but someone compiled this list. It's not complete — Howard Morris and June Foray are among those missing from it — but it's pretty good. And here's another list this person made, just of the folks on this year's panels along with links to their credits.

Brian Dreger sends a follow-up question to this earlier one…

I have to ask this, and I need an answer…if you can, please!

When you had an opportunity, as a Voice Director to hire people that you admired previously in other works that you had nothing to do with, did you have to force yourself to refrain from bombarding them with "fan" questions? I mean…Howard Morris? You could've annoyed the hell out of him just asking questions about his career! If I'm not mistaken, at the time you started doing voice directing you were a "seasoned" (a dopey description, but you get what I mean) professional writer, but new at being a Voice Director and maybe meeting — for the first time — artists you admired? Or maybe that was never a thing with you…you just saw them as people who are simply talented and then moved on to the work…?

I'm going to expand your question a little to answer it. I've spent a lot of my life meeting and often working with people whose work I'd admired when I was younger. It's not just as a director of cartoon voices. It was meeting Jack Kirby and Groucho Marx and George Burns and Sid Caesar and Stan Freberg and Steve Ditko and Charles Schulz and June Foray and Jay Ward and Carl Barks and Jerry Siegel and Joe Barbera and Daws Butler and legions of others in comic books, comic strips, animation and other creative fields.

Darn near 100% of these people (if not every last one of them) were pleased that I knew who they were and what they'd done. Now, it is possible to make a fool of yourself with some such folks by slobbering and pestering and asking stupid questions…and I know I did that at times and probably did it many times when I didn't know it. But there is a way to talk with such people, especially when — as in the case of Howard Morris — the meeting would or could lead to a job they welcomed.

(I told the story of meeting Howie in this message. That was the second time I met him. The first was on the set of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show that he was directing and I probably made a fool of myself then. But I had a good excuse then: I was eleven years old.)

As an adult, you need to respect their personal space and not "crowd" them, physically or emotionally or at an inappropriate time. Remember that they are human beings and they weren't put there, wherever they are, for your personal amusement and gratification. Remember that they often get asked the same questions over and over and over.

And if they're a performer and you fancy yourself a performer, they're probably not all that interested in you performing for them or trying to equate what you do to what they do.

Chuck McCann once told me that when people met Stan Laurel, around 99% of them started by asking him how he and Oliver Hardy met. Maybe it would have been refreshing for someone to save that question for later (if ever) and ask about something else. If they have one towering credit in their life, maybe they'd be pleased to be asked about something else for a change. When I met Robert Morse, I did not start off our very-short-term relationship by talking just about How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. I asked him about other shows and movies he'd been in. I sensed that he liked that I didn't think he'd only done one thing in his lifetime.

Basically, it's like the way you'd approach someone who wasn't famous but just someone you wanted to get to know: Don't come on too strong. And I've also found that most famous people don't like being told how awesome and legendary you think they are. If you give them a compliment, don't make it a clichéd one and make sure it's at human scale.  I personally think the word "legend" has been so devalued by constant application that it's hollow and meaningless. It's like a standing ovation on a talk show. They give them to everyone.

Bottom line: Just don't be a jerk.  That's all it takes.  And if you can't manage that, try not to be too big a jerk.

Here's a piece of animation history. It's July 7, 2000 and June Foray is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…

Johnny Grant, a local TV personality who was some sort of unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, is officiating at the ceremony, which was on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard about half a block east of La Brea. Among the speakers are Steve Allen and Stan Freberg. I'm somewhere in that mob behind the platform with Keith Scott, Leonard Maltin, Frank Welker, Carolyn Kelly and all sort of other interesting people.

Here — let's watch the video and then I'll tell you what I remember about that day…

People wonder how someone gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rules are here and a lot of potential applicants and nominators are scared off by the hefty fee that comes with it. I don't recall what it was in 2000 but today, it's $55,000. Sometimes, the honoree or his/her fan club comes up with the dough but I suspect it's usually paid by some TV or movie studio that has a show or film about to open starring the honoree. Agents have been known to say, when an in-demand star is in demand for a movie, "My client wants ten million dollars plus it would be nice (i.e., mandatory) if your studio would use all its clout to get him/her a star on Hollywood Boulevard and/or his/her footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese."

In June's case, she didn't have that kind of clout but Chuck Jones apparently did. He told Warner Brothers that he wanted it to happen and, sure enough, it happened.

Odd story about how I was present for the unveiling. At the time, I had written the script for a Scooby Doo videogame and although I was not voice-directing, I was required to be present at the session when the cast came in to record my script. Unfortunately, the session was the same day and hour as the star ceremony and I had promised June I would be there for the dedication.

I asked the studio to reschedule the recording session. They said no. I asked them to allow me to not be present for it. They said no. I stopped asking when I realized that — by one of those amazing coincidences in which my life abounds — the star ceremony was in front of a big office building on Hollywood Boulevard and the recording session was at a studio in that building commencing an hour before the ceremony. So we recorded for an hour, then took a break and all went out to watch June get her star, then we went back in and finished the recording. That's why Frank Welker was there.

(That Scooby Doo videogame, by the way, was never finished or released. I'll get someone very mad at me if I post the whole story about it. Let's just say a person involved in its production who did not work for Warner Brothers did something that rightly pissed-off the studio and they killed the whole project.)

Also present at the star ceremony was Larry Harmon, the proprietor of Bozo the Clown. Larry wasn't there because of June. Larry's office happened to be in that building and I ran into him in the lobby. When I told him what was happening outside, he came out, talked his way into the V.I.P. area with us, and spent the whole time telling me and everyone how unfair it was that he hadn't gotten a star on the sidewalk despite years of lobbying. Larry never worked for Chuck Jones.

But it was overall a very happy occasion with a lot of happy people. At one point in the video, Johnny Grant spotted Chuck McCann in the crowd and give him a big introduction…which was nice but it wasn't Chuck McCann. It was just a guy who looked a lot like him. One of those Chuck McCann impersonators you hear about all the time.

That's about all I remember. Thanks to Tom Knott, who I believe was the person who shot this video, and to Kamden Spies, who I know is the person who told me it was online.

Rob Rose read this post here and then sent the following my way…

I had to watch a few minutes of the video you linked just because that was one hell of a cast.

When you mentioned that June Foray was unavailable, my first thought was "Well, if you can't get her, Tress MacNeille is the obvious next choice." But I hadn't taken the dates into account until I saw someone asking in the YouTube comments if it was her first voice acting role, and someone else answered "Yes." I quickly checked IMDB, and if it is to be believed, while it was not her very first voice acting job, it is the first for which she is credited as something besides "Additional voices." Since she has gone on to become such a giant in the field, I wouldn't mind hearing anything about how you came to pick her and whether it was clear from the start that her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker.

(I also had no idea she was the lady who played Lucy in Weird Al Yankovic's "Hey Ricky!" video…)

When you add in the rest of the cast, you have a list that really spans several generations of voice-acting greats.

If I had a specific question, it would probably be to wonder how intimidating that would be, to have such talent in front of you on your first voice directing job. On the one hand, as you say, it surely makes your job easier; you wouldn't have to push anyone to get great performances. On the other hand, if you *did* find yourself in a place where you needed to give some direction, I can imagine you might feel like you really had no place telling some of these people how to do their jobs. (I am reminded of your story of having to ask Mel Blanc to read the line "What's up, Doc?" again more slowly…) I don't know if that kind of thing would get easier over time. At least I suspect that, whatever the actors you worked with may have thought of your directing (or writing) talent, they couldn't really get the "This kid doesn't even know who I am!" feeling for very long.

Anyway, fun story, and it gave me an excuse to send this email instead of doing some other things I probably ought to be doing.

I first met Tress via The Groundlings, the great L.A. based improv company from which came Phil Hartman, Laraine Newman, Paul Reubens, Jon Lovitz and a whole lot of other folks you know and have enjoyed. You would often see someone on the Groundlings stage and instantly think, "Hey, that person's going to have a great career!" So it was with Tress…and it didn't take any experience at talent-scouting to think that. Pretty damned obvious if you ask me.

Before I made my voice-directing debut with that Wall Walkers special, I asked Gordon Hunt at Hanna-Barbera if I could sit in on some recording sessions and observe. There was briefly a policy at the studio that writers and story editors could not attend recording sessions because they had a tendency to slow things down by asking to change lines or to usurp the director's authority. Also, I think Bill Hanna wanted us in our offices writing and editing as much as possible.

This was not Gordon's decree but he had to follow it…but he said I could sit in on recordings of shows I didn't write. That was fine with me and I think the first one I attended was a Scooby Doo in which Tress did guest star voices. My recollection is that by the time I cast her in the Wall Walkers show, she'd done a fair amount of animation even if she hadn't done lead characters…and I'm not sure she hadn't.

I didn't give a moment's thought to whether "her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker." I just knew she'd do a good job in the show…and she did.

I was not intimidated by having such a stellar cast on my first directing job. On the contrary, I thought they were so good that I couldn't possibly botch things up…and that is not false modesty or any other kind. I actually thought that. As I quickly learned, the secret to voice-directing was to hire actors who were so good, they didn't need much directing…if any.

Brian Dreger wrote me a little while ago…

Just finished watching episode two of Anna "Brizzy" Brisbin's Podcast. It made me think: How does somebody become a voice director…the person who gets to pick who does the voice, the person who tells them "You're not saying it right" (or whatever, etc). How did you get to do that the first time? Did you know what you were doing? Were you scared? Or did you just think "I've been studying this stuff for years — I know I can do this!" When you consider the history of voice acting, and all the different people who've done it, it's puzzling to think that somebody is in charge of all that…and their decisions could possibly make or break a show/movie.

I've told this story several times on panels but I guess I've never told it here. In 1983, I wrote a prime-time cartoon special for NBC which was produced by an in-house producer at NBC. They hired an animation company based in New York to do the animation but they needed to hire someone to direct the voice track in Los Angeles.

Today, there are dozens of professional voice directors around but at the time, there were probably around eight or nine…and the good ones were all under contract to studios not involved with this project. The folks at NBC handed me a list of the three experienced voice directors they could get and I thought all three of them were terrible. On an impulse, I said to the NBC execs, "I can't do a worse job than these guys. If you'll let me voice direct it and pick the actors I want, I'll do it for nothing."

At the time, I think if I or anyone had told NBC, "If you'll fire Johnny Carson and let me host The Tonight Show, I'll do it for nothing," they might have jumped at the chance to save money. Anyway, they agreed on the proviso that I audition at least three people for each part — which I did and then I got most of my picks. The major players were Daws Butler, Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, Howard Morris, Marvin Kaplan, Bill Scott (in what I think was his first non-Jay Ward voice job in a long time), Peter Cullen and a few others. We needed a young boy so I picked Scott Menville, who grew up to be a very fine adult voice actor.

And before anyone asks: June Foray was in Europe at the time.

I kinda/sorta/somewhat knew what I was doing, mostly from watching Gordon Hunt voice-direct shows at Hanna-Barbera. I'd also studied another voice director who was on that list of three and from him, I learned a lot of what not to do. He seemed to be on what some would call a "power trip," finding fault with perfectly fine performances just because he could.

The late Lennie Weinrib, who had worked for this director and fought with him to the point where they no longer worked together, told me, "He's perpetually mad that he can't do what we can do so he takes it out on us." One of the things I think I've had going for me as a voice director is that I am well aware I can't act as well as the worst person I would ever hire. I'm not saying a good voice actor can't direct — some do and do it well. I'm saying that there's usually trouble when a director resents being only on his or her side of the glass.

The day we recorded that special, I was a little scared but I figured that with the cast I'd selected, even I couldn't muck it up that much. The final show was not exactly what I'd wanted for a number of reasons but I did not think the voice track was one of them.

I did make some mistakes and I got a fair amount of help from Frank Welker, who by now had become a good friend of mine. On two occasions during the recording session, he asked if I could come out of the director booth and speak to him one-on-one so he could ask me some questions about certain lines in the script. That was a fib on his part. When I called a short break and went over to talk with him, he told me — making sure no one else could hear — of a couple of directing errors I'd made. I was grateful that he told me when I could still correct them and especially grateful that he did it the way he did.

Since I've come this far, I might as well link you to the show which, as I said, I wasn't that happy with. It was a prime-time special called Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls. I did not come up with that name, nor did I create the characters, nor did I have anything to do with the songs…

The end credits are mostly missing from this video but the producer was Buzz Potamkin and most of the character designs were done by Phil Mendez. The special was a pilot for a Saturday morning series and it was well-received and almost got on the NBC schedule. Why it didn't is a long, brutal story of how sometimes, a big and powerful studio can crush a small newcomer.

I was just happy that I got to work with such a fine cast, including Howard Morris, who soon became one of my favorite people of all time. And it did get me other offers to voice-direct, though I declined most where I'd only be doing that and not writing the show.

Someone named Mike wrote to ask…

First of all, I'm a big fan of your blog. Your recent post about voice actors that you wanted to have guest star on productions got me wondering… what voice actors auditioned to lend their voices to the Garfield projects you worked on? Were there auditions for Jon, Roy and Binky before Thom Huge decided to voice those characters? Were there any voice actors who auditioned for characters, didn't get the roles, but still wound up guest-starring on Garfield and Friends? Were there auditions at all, or did the crew just call up various actors they liked and offer them the roles?

Well, the first Garfield project with which I was involved was the Saturday morning series, Garfield and Friends. Jim Davis, the cat's creator, selected the voices before I came along. Garfield's first voice was, briefly, a radio personality named Scott Beach and you can read about him here. He did the voice for a short segment in a 1980 CBS special called The Fantastic Funnies.

That segment more or less served as the pilot for a series of prime-time animated Garfield specials, kicking off with Here Comes Garfield!, which aired in October of 1982. For that special and all that followed, Jim decided Garfield needed a different voice and the answer to the question, "Who did they audition?" would be "Who didn't they audition?" Just about every voice actor in L.A. read for the part and some of them read several times before Lorenzo Music tried out and got it. (Lorenzo, by the way, redubbed the Fantastic Funnies clip for when it was later shown here and there.)

One of the people who auditioned for the role of Garfield was Gregg Berger. Jim liked Gregg tremendously and while he felt Gregg was wrong for the cat, he found out Gregg could make dog sounds and awarded him the role of Odie. To this day, Gregg has been Odie in every case where Odie has had a voice.

Sandy Kenyon (you can read about him here) was the voice of Jon in that first special. With the second special, Garfield on the Town, Jim decided to give the role of Jon to a friend of his who'd been working for his company and had a background in radio and voice work. That was when Thom Huge became Jon…and he also picked up other roles, including Binky. For that special, Jim also selected Julie Payne to voice Jon's lady friend, Liz. As far as I know, Liz was the last role for which auditions were done. In other specials, Jim just cast actors he'd heard of or who had auditioned for other roles.

When Garfield and Friends started, Jim was originally the Voice Director but I took over casting new roles and eventually took over the voice direction when Jim got too busy to fly out here and do it. Thom Huge, who lived back in Indiana and worked for Jim there, flew out for voice sessions so we ganged-up recording dates so Thom could do several shows while he was out here. He turned out to be quite versatile so he did a lot of other roles in the show, plus he played Roy in the U.S. Acres segments. Gregg Berger also turned out to have an endless supply of other voices.

To cast the other regular characters in U.S. Acres, we did the only other auditions ever done for the Garfield and Friends series. We decided that since they were already part of the show, we'd have Julie Payne voice the character of Lanolin, and we'd assign Gregg one of the male roles and I brought in about eight of my favorite voice actors to audition. I directed the auditions, Jim listened to the tapes and he picked Gregg to be Orson, Howie Morris to be Wade Duck, and Frank Welker to play Bo, Booker and Sheldon.

And that was that. Thereafter, when we needed a new voice for a recurring or one-shot character, I might be able to have Gregg, Thom, Howie, Julie or Frank — or even Lorenzo, once or twice — do it but otherwise, I'd just hire someone I knew could give me what I wanted. A few of the actors who auditioned for U.S. Acres, like Chuck McCann and Lennie Weinrib, wound up doing guest voices.

Over the 121 half-hours we did of that series, we hired a lot of people who were new to the voice business. We also hired a lot of actors who'd voiced cartoons I'd loved as a child including Stan Freberg, June Foray, Larry Storch, Don Messick, Gary Owens, Dick Beals, Shep Menken, Paul Winchell, Julie Bennett, Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang. I certainly didn't need to audition any of those people.

This is from Ed Sullivan's TV program on September 27, 1953. The video says it's from The Ed Sullivan Show but in '53, it was still called Toast of the Town. It emanated from New York and back then, it was very common to refer to California — as Ed does here — as "The Coast." Something could happen in the Mojave Desert but to New Yorkers, it was happening on "The Coast," as if the Eastern United States didn't have a coastline of its own.

Stan Freberg and Daws Butler then had a best-selling comedy record. Both sides parodied Jack Webb's popular series, Dragnet, which was a radio series from 1949 to 1957, and which added a TV version in 1951. One side of the record was "St. George and the Dragonet" (Dragnet in medieval times) and the other was "Little Blue Riding Hood" (a Dragnet version of the children's story). Here's the latter with Ed assuming the announcer role done on the records by Hy Averback.

June Foray, who also appeared on both sides of the record, plays Little Blue Riding Hood and her grandmother. Daws Butler plays the other cop back at the station. It took a certain amount of ingenuity to do this live on stage with no sets or props and minimal costuming. On Ed's show that night, they also did the flip side of the record with the same no-budget staging.

The records were very popular and Jack Webb — who as Ed says, gave permission for it all — was delighted and felt that the parody upped the popularity of his series. But he was a bit annoyed that it planted in many minds that "We just want to get the facts, ma'am" or similar lines were heard often (or even at all) on his show. That was a Freberg/Butler invention which became part of Dragnet lore.

I was privileged to know and work with Stan, Daws and June…three people of awesome talent, amazing careers and vast amounts of sheer niceness. I miss all three of them very much…